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After College, What? 



for GIRLS 



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AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? 

FOR GIRLS. 



By HELEN EKIN STARRETT. 



Four daughters had graduated in six years at 
Vassar College, two or more among the " honor 
girls/' and all with a standing that ranked them 
among the most thorough students in their dif- 
ferent classes. And now they were all at home ; 
and the most perplexed people in the State of 
Illinois were their good old-fashioned parents, es- 
pecially their good old-fashioned father, as to 
what was to be done with such a body of the 
" higher education " in a little town of three 
thousand inhabitants, that was surrounded by a 
simple, agricultural population, and that never 
had any good travelling entertainments or lec- 
tures or concerts because it had such a little, 
miserable public hall. 

" I'm not so certain about this ' higher educa- 
tion ' for girls and women," said the kindly old 

5 



6 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT 9 — FOB GIRLS. 

father to me one evening, as he sat in the big 
arm-chair in his great cool old-fashioned parlor, 
"for the reason that I don't see what they are 
going to do with it, especially if they stay at 
home. I am not certain that it isn't a mistake, 
and that it doesn't nnfit them for the place in 
life that they were designed to fill. Now look, 
for instance, at my girls. Of course their mother 
and I wanted to do the very best we could for 
our daughters, seeing that we had no son ; and 
we concluded one of the best things was to give 
them all the education they would take. We had 
plenty of means to do it with, — farms, cattle, 
horses, money just accumulating in bank, and 
no particular use for it; and so we thought we'd 
send all the girls to college, especially as they 
all seemed anxious to go. Well, the first that 
went was Sarah; and after she got over her first 
homesickness she kept writing how much she 
was enjoying it, and what a grand life of study 
it was. And that just fired the other girls to 
get prepared to enter; and so one after another 
they all went. And now they are all through, 
and blest if I know what to do with them ! 
There was Sarah, that got through first ; and she 
came home, and I kind of thought she ought to 
do a little housekeeping — learn those things that 
a woman needs to do in a home, and I told her 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 7 

so. Well, she was real sweet and good about it, 
and turned in and helped her mother first-rate ; 
but I could see she wasn't exactly joyful or 
happy over it, and one day when I came in and 
found her sweeping and dusting, she said, as if 
half in fun and whole in earnest, ( It seems to 
me, father, that it's a very poor use to put a 
three-thousand-dollar education to, just to do the 
work that any uneducated foreigner would be 
glad to do for three dollars a week.' — 'Well,' 
said I, ' Sarah, there isn't any need for you to 
do a stroke of work if you don't want to ; I'm 
able and willing to hire every bit of it done, 
and I guess we'd better get another girl right 
away.' And then she sat down in a chair, and 
I thought I saw tears in her eyes as she said, 
' But, father, I must do s@mething ; I shall shrivel 
up and dry away without something to occupy 
my time. Oh, dear ! I wish I had my college-days 
to live over again.' And then she just broke 
down and cried. Well, I thought it all over, 
and really I could see a good deal to sympathize 
with. Here is this little town — nothing going 
on, nothing to do, nothing to talk about that 
would interest a girl that's been to college. All 
the young men among the storekeepers or the 
rich farmers around, who might have been agree- 
able acquaintances, and that would have made good 



8 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 

matches for ordinary girls — why, they have noth- 
ing in common with a girl that's spent four years 
studying Latin and Greek and history and lit- 
erature and the sciences. The girls don't take 
any pleasure in their company, and the boys are 
afraid of them ; and, as a consequence, I guess 
I'll have a lot of college-educated old maids on my 
hands. But still," said the old man, as if speak- 
ing to himself, " that would not make so much 
difference if only the girls themselves were happy 
and contented ; but I see they are not, and that 
is the puzzle. I declare, it's all a muddle ! " 

The good, kind old father had in his plain, sin- 
cere way stated a problem that will inevitably 
confront the parents of all college-bred girls, but 
that has its deepest import for the girls them- 
selves. It is a problem that should receive far 
more serious recognition than it does at the hands 
alike of parents and educators, and especially 
should it receive earlier recognition than it does 
in the years of life spent in college. The life 
of an earnest college girl is usually a happy and 
contented one, and this for very obvious reasons. 
She is busy ; she is regular and systematic in the 
employment of her time ; she is experiencing day 
by day the delight of agreeable mental activity, 
the joy of acquiring knowledge, the conscious ex- 
pansion of her intellectual powers, the widening 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 9 

of her horizon of life, and all this in the cheer- 
ful and stimulating companionship of her college- 
mates. 

"Each morning sees some task begun, 
Each evening sees its close; 
Something attempted, something done, 
Has earned a night's repose." 

Thus all unconsciously does the college girl 
pass happily through the four years of college 
life ; and at its close she finds herself suddenly 
confronted with blank nothingness, especially if 
she is the daughter of parents in easy circum- 
stances, and lives outside of the large cities. 

Were the secrets of hearts revealed, it could 
surely be shown, that in the case of thousands of 
educated girls and women, not only of our own 
day, but of all the years that have gone by since 
anything worthy the name of a liberal education 
was afforded to women, the first year or years 
after leaving school or college were years of deep 
and perplexing unhappiness. 

A pathetic figure in the memory of my own 
childhood is that of the return from a iamous 
female seminary of the daughter of a farmer 
who, greatly to the astonishment of the neigh- 
bors, had sent his daughter to school till she had 
graduated, the neighboring custom being, if daugh- 
ters were sent away to school at all, to send them 



10 AFTER COLLEGE WHATf — FOB GIRLS. 

for only a year or two. The daughter, a fine- 
looking, dark-haired girl of twenty-two or twenty- 
three years, rode in the family carriage, in which 
I also had a place. Even now I can see the sad 
silence of her face dnring that long day's ride 
home over the hills of Western Pennsylvania. I 
remember what a marvel she was to me as a 
" graduate," and how I wondered that she did not 
talk more, and at the tears I occasionally saw glit- 
tering in her large dark eyes. We arrived at her 
father's house at the close of a hot June day, and 
after the usual sincere but undemonstrative wel- 
comings we were soon seated around the bountiful 
supper-table. The daughter was plied with many 
questions, all of which she answered kindly and 
seriously. At last the good old farmer, her fa- 
ther, pushed back his chair from the table, and 
said, "Well, Amanda, I reckon ye've just got 
home in good time. Harvest begins next week, 
and there'll be a lot of hands to cook for ; and 
I reckon now you're through school and hum to 
stay, we won't need to keep any extra hired girl 
any more. I s'pose your seminary learnin' hain't 
made ye forget how to bake and cook and wash 
and iron ; " and then he added, seeing that her 
face was not responsive, " I suppose ye'll be glad 
to have a chance to pay back a little for yer ed- 
dication." I chanced to remain for a few days at 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOB GIRLS. 11 

that farmhouse, and consequently had an oppor- 
tunity to observe how " Amanda 7 ' took to farm- 
work after being at "the seminary." Her mother 
was a wiry, dark, petulant, arbitrary little woman, 
whose one watchword was, " Drive the work ! " 

And before noon the next day no one would 
have recognized in the overheated, bare-armed, 
coarse-aproned girl, helping to cook for a dozen 
farm-hands, the serene, dark-eyed girl of the even- 
ing before. Though but a child, I comprehended 
dimly the great change it must be for her, and 
felt my heart beat with sympathy as her driving 
mother frequently emphasized her vigorous direc- 
tions with, " Come, now, and let us see that go- 
ing to the seminary hasn't spoiled ye, and made 
ye good for nothing." I sympathized with her 
as I observed how at different times when the 
evening twilight had brought a little moment of 
quiet and repose, she would wander off by her- 
self among the great trees and flowering bushes 
of the yard, and return after a while with red- 
dened, downcast eyelids to seat herself on the 
porch, and make an effort to join cheerfully in 
the talk about the affairs of the farm and the 
prices of the markets. 1 

1 The sequel to the story of Amanda I learned during the 
Columbian Exposition at Chicago. There I met in one of 
the Musical Congresses a very interesting young woman from 



12 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 

Life is not quite so hard and mysterious a 
problem for women now as it was then, but there 
are still many sphinx-riddles confronting the edu- 
cated women of to-day. I have said that at the 
close of her college career the average college 
girl, daughter of well-to-do parents, usually finds 
herself face to face with blank nothingness in so 
far as worthy occupation of her time is concerned. 
Her brother, who may have graduated at Yale or 
Harvard at the same time, is perhaps decreed an 
additional year or two of foreign travel before 
settling down to the real purpose of his life ; but 
his education and his travel are both accomplished 
with an important and definite object in view ; 
viz., the fitting him to take a strong, firm hold on 
the life-work which unquestionably lies before 
him, even though what that life-work is to be 
may not be clearly defined. 

Probably the first realizing sense of dissatis- 

the far Northwest, who was in charge of the musical depart- 
ment of a flourishing academy in that region. I learned, al- 
most by accident, that she was the daughter of Amanda, who, 
a year or two after her return from the seminary, had married 
a young clergyman who had been called as pastor of a neigh- 
boring country church. Together they had gone to the far 
West ; together they had established a school, which had 
grown into the academy which this young woman represented. 
They were still its joint head, and had been the means of 
providing excellent educational advantages for thousands of 
young people in that far "Western State. Truly Amanda's 
education had proven " worth while " ! 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOB GIRLS. 13 

faction and painful perplexity will come to the 
college girl from the breaking up of mental and 
physical habits that have in four years' time be- 
come a kind of second nature. Here is a psy- 
chological fact that parents should understand 
and be prepared for. It is always difficult, and 
to a certain extent painful, to the human being 
to adjust itself to new relations, and to change 
habits that have become at all fixed. This pain 
in adjusting herself to new relations constituted 
the " homesickness " of the girl when first she 
entered college, and it is in a large measure the 
cause of her " homesickness " for college after 
her return. She has become habituated to doing 
things by system and rule ; to mental applica- 
tion during stated periods of the day; to accom- 
plishing something definite every day ; and to be 
suddenly deprived of this habitual motive and 
stimulus is to be made conscious of a painful 
void. No expression is more frequently heard 
upon the lips of the college girl who has com- 
pleted her college course than that " the hardest 
kind of work is doing nothing." 

But occupation of time alone is not enough 
to fill the "aching void" in the breast of the 
earnest college girl ; it must be occupation that 
amounts to something — accomplishes some wor- 
thy result. The round of social duties will not 



14 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT f — FOB GIRLS. 



do this : the greater or smaller share she may take 
in the duties of the household will not do it; for 
as the good old man's daughter of whom I have 
spoken, argued, she will be apt to feel that it is 
not very good economy to use a three-thousand- 
dollar education doing three-dollar-a-week work. 
It is not reasonable to expect that she will at 
once take to Sunday-school and mission work to 
an extent that shall fill and satisfy her heart, 
though Sunday-school and mission work have their 
place, and a very worthy one, in the life of any 
young woman. The eager cry of the healthy, 
aspiring young soul is the same as that of the 
eager, healthy young child, I want something to 
do. 

Now, what parents, educators, and college girls 
need to recognize is that this unrest and longing 
are the result of a spiritual law of being. That 
law is, that action, progress, achievement, are the 
essential conditions of a satisfying, not to say a 
happy, life. The human being requires as an es- 
sential condition of contentment, not to say hap- 
piness, variety, change, fresh mental nutriment, 
and opportunity for useful activity. It wearies 
of the most beautiful surroundings if it is de- 
prived of these, tires of the most heavenly music, 
loathes the most delicate viands. This is a psy- 
chological as well as a physiological fact, and we 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 15 

must adapt ourselves to it. The question for all 
is how to adjust our lives to this law. 

Of course there is but one adequate adjust- 
ment ; and that is to seek and find some worthy 
occupation for our time, talents, and energies. 
The world is brimming over with things to do 
and needing to be done, and there is joy and an 
« exceeding great reward " in the doing of them. 
But it is a pity to wait till the end of a college 
career to find this out by painful personal ex- 
perience. Far better were it for parents and pro- 
fessors to teach and emphasize this truth, this 
law of being, from the time that the young soul 
first begins to regard life with eagerness and in- 
terest. All through the college course the thought 
should be emphasized that the object and aim of 
the education there acquired is to enable students 
to use their acquirements as effective tools with 
which to carve the fortune of life for themselves. 
They should be taught that one of the supreme 
joys of life is the joy of doing — a joy which comes 
to many a young woman as a divine revelation 
and as one of the beautiful results of the cultiva- 
tion and xpansion of her intellectual powers. 
Becoming familiar with the statement of this 
truth, the college girl will learn to think ahead, to 
prepare and to plan for a life of definite and use- 
ful activity after she leaves college. She will not 



16 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT ? — FOB GIRLS. 

be left to face with dumb dismay the experience 
of an unsatisfied, longing heart, or the dead 
monotony of nothing in particular to do. 

But where in the plan and aim of a college 
girl's life is to come in the possibility of her 
marriage ? That is a happy and beautiful pos- 
sibility that may come in anywhere ; but the less 
it is watched and waited for, the more likely will 
it be to come in. Most college girls have the 
social opportunity within a year or two of the 
close of a college course to form acquaintances 
that will determine whether an early marriage 
is likely to be their destiny ; but in the mean- 
time, the other aim must be held steadily in 
view as a strong probability set against an uncer- 
tain possibility. If the college girl marries, why, 
God bless her ! there is good promise of the 
founding of that most precious thing on earth, 
— a happy home. She may for a long stretch 
of years find all she needs of useful occupation 
of her time and talents and best energies in its 
conduct and the care of her children. 

But for our college girl who does not marry 
within a year or two of the completion of her 
college course, there remains the inexorable law 
of worthy occupation as a condition of happiness ; 
she must find something to do. Parents must 
recognize and yield to this law, even if it neces- 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT f — FOR GIRLS. 17 

sitates that the daughter or daughters shall for- 
sake home and the small town in which home 
is located in order to find wider scope for their 
cultivated powers and their eager mental activi- 
ties. As to what the particular line of occupa- 
tion shall be, that must in all cases be determined 
by individual talents and preferences. 

Here is where the value of having beforehand 
thought out and planned a course of action be- 
comes apparent. Nearly every one has some 
special aptitude for some special work, and this 
aptitude should be the guide. The great and 
noble and, to those who love it, the most inspir- 
ing occupation of life, that of teaching, must, for 
many years to come, offer to the college girl the 
quickest and surest path to a rewarding profes- 
sion, because, as yet, college-educated girls are in 
great demand for the higher positions in our 
best schools and colleges. Indeed, it must, in 
the nature of things, be many years before the 
demand for college-educated girls for teachers can 
possibly be supplied. For those, then, who can 
with pleasure look forward to the profession of 
teaching, what a stimulus to select some special 
department of study (for all our best teaching 
is now done in the line of specialties), and to 
prepare for that work ! After teaching, a score 
of delightful and rewarding occupations suggest 



18 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOE GIRLS. 

themselves, — art, music, literature, the learned 
professions, and, finally, there is that profession 
which needs and demands the best talent of the 
best educated women of the land, — the profes- 
sion, the overshadowing importance of which civ- 
ilized humanity is but beginning to realize, — that 
of the kindergarten. 

Living as she does in this day when money 
is the universal measure of so much of the high 
service rendered to the world, it is natural and 
desirable that the college-bred girl shall work 
for money. 1 Happily the sentiment, nay the 
deep conviction, of the best men and women of 
our time has changed in regard to the earning 
of money by women. We are learning — we 
have learned — that money is only a form of 
power, and that to work for and desire it may 
be a noble ambition. Money is, indeed, the most 

1 One suggestion seems pertinent here as meeting an ob- 
jection nearly always offered when the question of college 
girls working for pay is discussed. It is said that young 
women who do not need to work for money should leave 
paying work for those who do need it; that to take a sal- 
aried position in almost any department of work is to take the 
bread out of some needy woman's mouth. The fallacy of 
this statement becomes apparent as soon as we apply it to 
young men who do not need to work. To say that rich 
men's sons should not work because they may thereby deprive 
some needy young man of employment is an absurdity on its 
face. The truth is, that all honest work makes the world 
richer, and that every idler is supported at the expense of 
some one's toil. Nevertheless, it is a point to be considered 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT f — FOR GIRLS. 19 

subtle and easily wielded form of power that 
civilization has ever contrived. The history of 
civilization is but the history of the extension 
and distribution of power from the higher and 
stronger to the humbler and weaker classes of 
society. The invention of gunpowder first made 
all men equal in the physical contest for life and 
liberty; the invention of money gave to woman 
her first instrument of defence against social in- 
justice. Nearly all the legal rights and privileges 
that women now enjoy were first conceded to them 
as property rights. But not to dwell further on 
this point, it may safely be asserted that the earn- 
ing of money, the accumulation and the care of 
property, is now regarded as a perfectly proper 
and womanly occupation for any girl. That col- 
lege girl has the problem of life half solved for 
her whose parents and friends are willing from 
the outset that she should earn money if she so 
chooses. 

whether the superior education of the college girl should not 
enable her to find work in new directions, and inspire her with 
ambition not to displace any other worker, but to organize 
new departments of work for herself — perhaps with the 
beautiful possibility of providing employment for others. 
Professor William T. Harris has told us that the most useful 
intellectual power in the world — and the rarest — is that pre- 
cious directive power which can organize enterprises and open 
up new avenues of activity for the vast masses of humanity 
who can follow but cannot lead. Herein is a suggestion 
worthy the earnest consideration of every college girl. 



20 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT ? — FOB GIRLS. 

My observation leads me to conclude that the 
more highly educated the family, the more as- 
sured the social position, the readier the assent 
of parents to this wish, if it be a wish on the 
part of their college-bred daughters. I have in 
mind two instances which illustrate this point. 
Circumstances gave me the pleasure of a short 
visit to the family of a wealthy banker in one of 
the smaller cities of Illinois, where I found the 
most charming and refined family life in a home 
spacious and elegant perhaps beyond any other 
home in that city. One of the early pleasant sur- 
prises was to learn that the eldest daughter, a 
recent college graduate, was with her father in his 
bank as one of his most useful assistants, on a 
regular and handsome salary. Expressing my 
pleasure and approbation at this, the father, him- 
self a college graduate and a courteous and refined 
gentleman, said, "I felt that it would be a great 
deal better for our daughter, and make her far 
happier, to have something to do; and," with a 
fond glance at the bright-eyed, happy-looking girl, 
"that is true, is it not, Florence ?" Her smiling 
and hearty response showed only too plainly her 
pleasure in the useful and honorable part she 
was allowed to take in life. Eeturning from that 
visit, I met on the train a gentleman whose oc- 
cupation was that of bookkeeper, who also had a 

f 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOB GIRLS. 21 

daughter, to whom he had afforded the advantages 
of a college education. Inquiring for her, I said, 
" Miss Margaret told me she wished to teach, and 

that a fine position had been offered her in B 

Institute. I suppose she will accept it." The 
father's face flushed with positive anger as he re- 
plied, "I have put my foot down on all that 
nonsense. Never as long as I can earn money to 
support my family shall my daughter go out teach- 
ing." — " But," I replied, " what will Miss Mar- 
garet do with all her splendid energy and vitality ? 
She must find something to do in order to be 
happy." — " Let her do what other girls do, stay 
at home with her mother," he replied in a tone 
of such annoyance and irritation as warned me not 
to pursue the subject further. But in my mind's 
eye I saw the earnest, enthusiastic face of his 
gifted and finely educated daughter, thought of 
her in the neat and pretty but necessarily small 
home with all her powers " cribbed, cabined, and 
confined " in the monotonous round of daily trifles 
and petty personal interests. Equal to the posi- 
tion of the best among teachers, fitted both by 
nature and education for a broad sphere of useful 
and happy activity, capable of becoming a foun- 
tain of strength and helpfulness to others, she is 
doomed, for the time being at least, to bear the 
pain of imprisoned capabilities, unused energies, 



22 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 

and the dull, monotonous round of days without 
any special interest or special purpose. Poor 
book-keeper's daughter ! Happy banker's daugh- 
ter ! 

But while the finding and entering upon some 
regular and honorable occupation, and the earn- 
ing of money thereby, is an excellent and noble 
thing for a college-bred girl to undertake, it is 
not necessarily the only or the noblest thing. 
To seek happiness is one thing, to follow the nar- 
row path of duty is sometimes quite another and 
far nobler thing. Oftentimes the unquestionable 
duty of the college-bred girl is in her home and 
to her parents and younger brothers and sisters ; 
and there may be no possible compensation but 
that of affection and the consciousness of duty per- 
formed. Often it is the plain duty of the girl 
who has finished a college course to take upon 
herself the task of lightening the burdens and 
assuming the cares of the too often over-burdened 
mother who has so patiently borne them for many 
years that the daughter might be free to acquire 
the college education. That college girl's educa- 
tion is defective in a vital point who has not 
been led to realize the overshadowing authority 
of that "Stem daughter of the voice of God," 
Duty ; and that college education is a failure that 
makes the daughter impatient of, and petulant 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOB GIRLS. 23 

under, conditions of home-life that are uncon- 
genial, or that require self-denial. Did she but 
realize it, here is a new and noble kingdom for 
her to conquer. To change and better those irri- 
tating and unhappy conditions ; to reorganize, re- 
fine, inspire, elevate, — this is a work that often 
calls importunately to the college girl for accom- 
plishment ; and it is often a work that may extend 
outside the family circle, and include neighbors, 
friends, and even an entire village or town, in its 
scope. The call of such a duty or duties should 
never fall unheeded upon the ear or the heart 
of the earnest and worthy college girl. 

And there is still another field of useful activ- 
ity which has proved strangely attractive to a 
large number of college girls during the past dec- 
ade of years, especially among those so fortu- 
nately situated in life in regard to money matters 
that they have no need to consider for a moment 
the earning of money as a necessity for support. 
That field is the field of human benevolence. It 
can be nothing less than the inspiration of the 
Divine Spirit of Love that has turned the hearts 
of so many in high places to consider the sor- 
rows, the needs, the distressing environment, of 
the poor and ignorant ; and that has led them to 
devote time, money, health, to the bettering of 
their condition. Surely it is " God manifest in the 



24 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOR GIRLS. 

flesh " that has brought to pass the now countless 
agencies for the uplifting of the human race from 
the abysses of degradation and suffering in which 
it is found in all large cities ; that has organized 
" university settlements " and " working-girls' 
clubs/' and "homes," and has duplicated Toynbee 
Hall of London with Hull House of Chicago, and 
similar institutions. 

When the college girl is truly inspired with 
this "enthusiasm of humanity," this divine love 
for her fellow-creatures and a desire to help them, 
she has found the best and highest that there is 
in life. It is among the saintly women who 
have from choice devoted their lives, or a por- 
tion of them, to this work that has no reward 
except the doing of it, and the blessing it con- 
fers on other lives, that we find those serenely 
happy faces that make us think of the beauti- 
ful Madonnas of the great masters of old. This 
inspiration of devotion to the work of uplifting 
fallen humanity seldom comes to the young and 
happy except as the result of some great blow to 
the heart or wrecking of the ordinary hopes, 
loves, and ambitions of youth. When it comes 
as a result of such wreckage it is the message of 
divine healing. It is the transforming and trans- 
muting power that changes the selfish, exclusive 
love of one and of self, to the beneficent, inclu- 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOE GIRLS. 25 

sive, healing love of all. It is the Gethsemane 
experience of the soul that enables it to under- 
stand and appreciate the words of that great 
suffering yet triumphant philosopher who said, 
" Learn to say to happiness, ' I can do without 
thee, ? for with self-renunciation, life begins ; " * 
or better and more simply, " Not my will, but 
thine, be done." 

And since the lesson of what to do with a 
college education when it is gained is of such 
vital importance to the college girl, how great is 
the moral responsibility of those who occupy the 
position of instructors and mentors during the 
years of college life. I once heard a paper upon 
the Higher Education of Girls, written by one 
who was in the best sense a woman of the world ; 
that is, she had had every advantage that wealth, 
education, culture, foreign travel, and association 
with the learned and great could give. In it she 
stated that the ideal college or university for girls 
should have three specially endowed chairs filled 
by women. The first of these should be for phys- 
ical culture, including culture of the speaking or 
conversational voice ; the second for instruction 
in the history, principles, and practical applica- 
tion of art; the third should be filled by a 
woman who should be general adviser as to the 

i Carlyle. 



26 AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOB GIRLS. 

conduct and aims of life. The average girl, the 
writer said, or words to that effect, at twenty-one 
had no more idea of her own needs, capabilities, 
or of the conditions necessary to her happiness, 
than a child ; and during this chaotic, formative 
period of character her greatest need was an ad- 
viser of her own sex who was wise enough, strong 
enough, and experienced enough to help her, or 
at least to restrain from hasty decision or action 
that might wreck her whole future life. 

It will probably be long before we can have any 
such special chair in colleges for girls, or in uni- 
versities where they are admitted as students ; but 
fortunate is that college or university that num- 
bers among its instructors or professors wise, help- 
ful souls, who love out of their own full knowledge 
of life to impart of the highest to the young souls 
with whom they are brought in contact ; who under- 
stand that deepest, most inspiring, most consoling 
of all truths, that "rest for the soul" is to be 
found only when our powers of mind and body 
are actively engaged in harmony with, and as 
part of, the Divine Life and plan in helping to 
bring about all that is good ; who can open up life 
in a new and wonderful and heart-satisfying way 
because it has thus been opened to their own vis- 
ion; who can help others to solve the problem 
of life because they have first solved it for them- 



AFTER COLLEGE WHAT? — FOB GIRLS. 27 

selves ; whose lives are a practical exposition of 
that prayer, voiced by the sweetest hymn-writer 
of modern times : x — 

" Lord, speak to me that I may speak 
In living echoes of Thy tone; 
As Thou has sought, so let me seek, 
Thy erring children, lost and lone. 

Oh, lead me, Lord, that I may lead 
The wandering and the wavering feet; 

Oh, feed me, Lord, that I may feed 
Thy hungering ones with manna sweet. 

Oh, strengthen me, that while I stand 
Firm on the rock and strong in Thee, 

I may stretch out a loving hand 

To those who breast life's troubled sea." 

When such instructors, such professors, such in- 
spired helpers and sympathizers and advisers for 
the young, are found, let colleges and universities 
cherish them, for they are the ones who will best 
help our daughters to answer that momentous 
question, — After College What ? 

1 Frances Ridley Havergal. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





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